Presenting the Carbuncle Cup, crowning what we believe to be the very worst new building in Britain built in the past two years.
It has been a long two years, during which many wretched builds have been built. But there is only one that can truly be named the worst – or possibly two, jointly – and The Fence has taken up the mantle in crowning this winner-loser for the Carbuncle Cup 2026. The buildings were nominated by the public – one in 61 separate entries – and then judged by a panel of experts. Ugliness was not enough to secure a place on the short list. They needed to offend something deeper, more egregious, in their design and execution. As one panelist noted, ‘We’re not enjoying this, despite the laughter. These things shouldn’t exist.’ Below are the nine buildings shortlisted for The Fence’s 2026 Carbuncle Cup – and at the end you will find the winner. We offer our warmest thanks to the architects and engineers who made this project possible.
Robeson House
‘The building is totally incoherent with bricks stuck on in any direction, devoid of any interest or attempt to build for the future or the community,’ James Green, via email.
The problem exemplified here is that, as one panelist observed, ‘a lot of architects just don’t know how to build.’ There are a few others too, not least the brickwork, which could be accurately and kindly described as all over the shop. The building was designed as student housing by the LSE and named after the civil rights activist Paul Robeson, who has surely suffered enough already and need not have his name attached to this mess. The first example of several shortlisted London housing disasters.
Belgrove
Public nomination: ‘It is grossly over-scaled for the plot, rejects all sense of context (other than the token buff brickwork) and lacks any sense of programmatic legibility,’ George Davis, via email.
Picture this. You’ve just arrived at King’s Cross. You’re funnelled off the platform, pass one of the dozen food outlets recently shut for a rodent infestation, and emerge dazed and blinking in front of the eyesore of Belgrove House. Much to say about this building, but perhaps most important is the question of why there is no architectural code governing development beside some of the country’s most remarkable railway architecture. To make matters worse, it is still unfinished, meaning we may have to suffer it for years to come.
Triangle Yard
Public nomination: ‘If you’re ever unfortunate enough to gaze upon this Elephants-foot-eque eyesore you’d soon realise how imposing and disastrously out of place this building truly is. Like a big orange slab with it being almost as wide as it is tall,’ Oscar Vaughan-Birch, via email.
The nominee made a strong stab at convincing the judges, but the panel were nonetheless quite taken by the submitted pictures: ‘I think it’s quite cute,’ said one. Another said that they were ‘charmed by its shape and the word “elephant” – so let’s leave it at that for me.’ It was conceded that the siloed centre was a menace, not least for the resulting wind tunnel, but that overall, it really wasn’t the worst the nation could offer up. Moving on…
Aspen Tower
Public nomination: ‘The renders for the project show a glassy tower disappearing into the sky but what has been built is a clunky and awkward building that seems to have been value-engineered to within an inch of its life,’ Kieran Clarke Taylor, via email.
Back in the day, the tagline for Canary Wharf was that it would look like Venice, but work like New York. Unfortunately, Aspen Tower neither has the sleek efficiency of New York nor the watery beauty of Venice. Its concrete frame is poorly covered, and the building is finished with despicably enormous window frames. As for the ‘affordable’ housing, this is located in a separate tower, which resembles a multi-storey car park and a troubling combination of construction-site portacabins. One of two egregious examples of luxury housing in London on this list, Aspen House both depresses and terrifies.
Cardiff Central Quay
The first red flag was that it describes itself on its website as ‘A PLACE FOR NEW THINKING FROM WHICH OPPORTUNITY AND INSPIRATION WILL RADIATE’.
No one longs for a building that invokes the image of radiation, and especially not one that’s a mixed grill offering luxury housing, hotels, offices and probably a few hundred other things, but we don’t have time to get into that. There is a worst building of the nation, and although the stone-coloured glass cladding is vile, again, it’s really not the worst of the lot.
Art’otel in Hoxton
Art’otel is especially depressing because it sits on a plot of land that used to be genuinely cool, and it was genuinely cool because of the simple fact that it was empty and unregulated, which meant that people used it for interesting things.
It has now been cannibalised in service of a luxury hotel rendered in the shape of a cog – a weighty feat of capitalist symbolic irony, if there ever was one. In the words of one panelist: ‘I feel a deep sinking in my chest when I look at it. It’s really over and what do we have now?’
Ventilation pipe at Farnham Station
Does this count as a building? Hard to say, but the point stands that it is ugly. It is ugly enough that it received the judges’ nodding approval: ‘I think this was a delightful nomination.’
But, is it really the worst building in the UK? Surely we can do better.
Astley Warehouses
Public nomination: ‘It is a political sign of our Times: bureaucracy and greed over quality of life’, Patsy Anders, via email.
Now we are onto the true villains. We were made savagely aware of the monstrosity thanks to an email stampede comprising sixty-one votes. Of course, that is not how this award works – please note, everyone, for next year – but nonetheless, the residents of Wigan had a point. In the words of one panelist: ‘Lots of the residents hate it because it’s big – I don’t mind big, but it could be big and good, and this seems to be big and bad.’ A perfect and fitting emblem of disposable and shoddy design. It was almost the definitive winner, before being trumped by another wound of a site.
Filigree
Public nomination: ‘Lewisham Gateway was presented as proof that public-private partnerships could deliver regeneration and affordable housing simultaneously – instead, the Filigree exposes the fragility of that bargain,’ Ruairidh Pritchard, via email.
The first problem was the name. ‘I’ve never seen anything less like a filigree,’ remarked one panellist. ‘Filigroan.’ The next was the building itself. After a flood in the central plant room, which affected all four associated buildings, 400 residents had to be evacuated into a similarly awful set of flats. It was not insulting enough to pay close to half a million pounds for a matchbox room: they now had to be chucked out into a tin can next door. There are countless videos of black mould, leaks, valve peeling falling apart. It is an insult and injury to the notion of good housing, and it for this reason that the winner of the 2026 cup has been squarely split between the Astley Warehouses and the Filigree.
Our jury chair, Cath Slessor, had this to say:
I think it’s important to reflect on the fact that while both winners are supremely ugly, ugliness, per se, is a subjective judgement. One person’s carbuncle may be another person’s jewel (and in fact, technically, a ‘carbuncle’ can also refer to a type of gemstone). So, while appearance is an obvious criterion, the winners are also emblematic of something much more rotten and disturbing in terms of how these buildings were procured, sited, scaled, built and operated. Their very existences and functions are carbuncular: a humongous ‘fulfilment’ centre created to satiate demand for online consumption and a block of (largely) unaffordable housing that barely makes a ripple in the vast ocean of London’s grotesque housing need and has actually ended up displacing its occupants because of technical issues. At the heart of this darkness is simple greed: building big and cheaply, ruthlessly value engineering and riding roughshod over neighbours and users. And then onto the next monstrosity. Architects play along because it oils the wheels and ‘if we don’t do it, someone else will’, but seriously. Have a word with yourselves.
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Our 2026 panel consisted of seven judges:
Cath Slessor, former editor of the Architectural Review, who is acting as chair.
Phin Harper, sculptor and critic.
Bertie Brandes, screenwriter.
William Pelham, co-founder of The Fence.
Lucy Watson, commissioning editor at the FT.
Lev Bratishenko, twister of meaning at the Cosmic House.
